Tag: design

I’m thrilled to be able to finally announce the winners of The King Street Design Competition. We had some fantastic entries including from as far away as the United States. We also had some amazing designs from pupils at our very own Seaton Primary School. I think transport officers at Aberdeen City Council could learn a thing or two from Seaton Primary School students.

We are in the process of posting/giving the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative vouchers to the winners and will also hand over the winning designs to the Aberdeen City Council.

I’m so impressed with the designs we received. A lot of thought has gone into them. Here are the winners in the adults category.

In first place is Mark Philpotts from City Infinity. You can view the full concept as a pdf here. Mark has clearly designed something with cyclists in mind. He’s also incorporated a ‘boarder’ design to accommodate both bus stops and cycle tracks.

In second place is Christopher Wyatt with the following design. Christopher has included a bus gate on West North Street for his design. The idea for this is to prevent general traffic from making a right turn onto King Street while preserving access for buses and emergency vehicles. He’s also made use of floating bus stops. You can see Christopher’s full design here.

In the children’s category we have 6-year-old Noa in first place. We love that Noa has considered the visually impaired in his design.

For 2nd place we have a tie between Ava:

And Halo:

Thank you to everyone who entered and to our team of judges. Thanks also to Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative for donating the vouchers. The designs prove that no space is too challenging and with a bit of creativity and good design principles we can make Aberdeen a place where active travel is encouraged.

Like this:

King Street in Aberdeen is long, reasonably flat, and connects the University of Aberdeen with the city centre. However it’s congested, polluted, and frightening to cycle along. We think it should have a segregated bike path but we recognise there are challenges to putting cycling infrastructure on existing roads – what happens at bus stops and junctions? Should the cycle path be two-way on one side of the road or one-way on each side? How much space needs to be taken from motor vehicles?

We want to know what YOU think and so we’re inviting people from the community of all ages and backgrounds to submit designs for how King Street could look with a segregated bike path. There are three vouchers from Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative up for grabs for the winning entries which will be judged at the end of February by a panel of independent judges.

A segregated bike path on King Street will be a boon for Aberdeen because it will make the city more attractive to students and university staff, increasing student numbers in the long term and helping to attract and retain talented staff. With more people cycling it will also reduce congestion and pollution in the area and increase health and well-being. Ultimately we’d like to see a segregated path that connects the University of Aberdeen with Robert Gordon University.

The winning designs will be showcased on our website and submitted to the Aberdeen City Council. Obviously we can’t force the Aberdeen City Council to implement the designs but they will feed into the council’s SUMP (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan).

Like this:

This morning we handed over one of the crowd-funded copies of Designing for Cycle Traffic to the Aberdeenshire Council. We met with Councillor Martin Ford at the start of the new cycle track at Kintore beside the A96. The new path goes all the way to Port Elphinstone and there are plans to extend it in the other direction to Blackburn.

Cllr Ford seemed pleased to accept the book and wants to increase active travel in the region through investment in the right infrastructure. We recognise that designing for cycling is challenging, especially after decades of prioritising cars, which is why we hope this book will be helpful.

We want cycling to be inclusive and something anyone can do including women, children, men, the elderly, and people with disabilities. But to reach this goal we need the right infrastructure and with the right infrastructure we can open up cycling to groups of people who otherwise wouldn’t do it.

Cycling can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, lower pollution levels in the air we breathe, improve our mental and physical health, lower road maintenance and parking costs, reduce congestion, and if you cycle as part of your daily commute, you can eat that second piece of cake, guilt-free. What’s not to love about that?